Aftran's Story
by Shoebox Zookeeper
Summary: What I imagine could have happened to Aftran from Book 19, after her encounter with Cassie and Animorphs. Please forgive the use of quotation marks for thought-speech. I haven't worked out how to display angle brackets.


_Note: The Animorphs and all the characters mentioned in this story are the creation of K.A. Applegate, and belong to her and Scholastic Inc. I'm respectfully using them just for fun and not for profit._

**Aftran's Story**

My name is Aftran-Nine-Four-Two of the Hett Simplat pool.

I am a Yeerk. I am what many would consider to be the enemy. My race are hated by the Andalites.

But my story is not about that – it is not about the hate of one race for another. It is a simple story, about how I came to truly feel the peace that came from my deal with one of those who would call me the enemy.

I sat alone in the meadow. And they surrounded me – the Animorphs. Their leader, "Prince Jake", as the Andalite addressed him, had told his friends, and me, that he would not make any decision about what to do with me. He had tenderly picked up the tiny creature and left the meadow.

The tiny creature that was Cassie.

I waited, without saying a word, or even moving. I knew that I could never escape them, no matter how hard I tried. If they decided to destroy me, I would be powerless to prevent them. They were infinitely more powerful than me – they could run, fly, or swim after me in any of their manifold morphs, and I, a helpless "slug" trapped in the body of a tiny and injured child, would have no hope. Yet I hardly even thought of that. All I thought about was Cassie.

One by one, they left, silently turning their back on me and following the same path that Jake had. In the end, only Rachel was left.

Rachel was in morph. She was a vast beast, a hundred times my weight, with feet that could crush my bones, and tusks that could impale me. As she watched me, I could feel her loathing for me. It radiated from the body of this giant and monstrous creature that housed the mind and spirit of a ruthless fighter. I knew I was completely at her mercy. For what seemed an age we stood and stared at each other, neither of us moving.

Then, as I watched, she began to change. The rough, gray skin lightened, and became smoother. The long "trunk", as I believe it is called, was sucked up into her head as her fearsome tusks shrank and vanished in her mouth. She shrank, and shrank, and in less than five minutes, she was her human self again.

And, like the others, she left without saying a word.

As she left, I saw the look of anguish in her eyes. Anguish for what I had done to her friend.

For hours I sat there, still, not hearing the sound of the many Earth-creatures around me, not seeing the glorious, beautiful array of colours in nature that is denied to my people in our natural form. I closed my mind to the world, to the sensations of my host body, its physical and mental needs. I withdrew deep, deep into myself.

Finally, I was roused by the pleas of Karen, the little girl whose brain I surrounded with my body.

"Aftran, please, I have to go. It's so cold. And it's dark"

I snapped out of my interminable trance, and looked around with Karen's eyes. It was now almost completely dark. A chill had descended on the meadow. Once again, I, and the human child in whose body I was trapped, were alone and lost in the forest. And this time, there was no Cassie to protect us.

Still in control of Karen's body, I started us moving. I got up and walked, each step an agony, through the woods.

But no! I was not completely lost. When I had taken over Cassie's body, and morphed into the osprey, I had been able to see for many miles with my superior vision from up on high. I had noted the way back to the town. I started on the way.

But before long I realized that it was not going to work. The world looked so different down among the trees than it did from above them. I could not tell what direction led where – I could not place myself in the mental picture of the land I had memorized while up there. A picture that was fading. I was lost. In anguish I realized that we would both die – Karen from cold and hunger and thirst, and me from Kandrona starvation. Cassie's sacrifice would be in vain. Both myself, and two other good creatures would die because of me.

"We're lost, Aftran, aren't we?"

Karen had spoken to me. I didn't answer. It was a strange thing, still, for me to communicate sincerely with non-Yeerks. I preferred my silence, alone in my dark thoughts, which I hid as well as I could from Karen.

"Turn to your left, and you'll come to the stream."

I jumped. That was not Karen speaking to me. It was another thoughtspeak voice. One of the Animorphs? I looked up, and I saw a bird with red tail-feathers circling a hundred feet above. I recognized the one called Tobias. Of all of Cassie's friends, he had seemed the one most willing to trust me.

"If you keep following the stream, you'll come to the town."

I gazed at him. "Thankyou", I said, with Karen's mouth. He flew away, without a word – flapping hard in the cold, dark world without thermals.

I reached the stream, and followed it, as Tobias had said. And before long, I did indeed see the light of the town ahead of me. I felt a tremendous relief, despite my own self-loathing.

Then, suddenly, a new fear seized me.

I knew that I had to return to the Yeerk pool beneath the town. It was my only chance for survival. And yet, the only way I had of getting to it was in the body of Karen. I could not go there, without Karen going there. I had promised Cassie that I would leave Karen's body, and never return. But I could only survive if I left Karen at the Yeerk pool. Alone and at the mercy of my fellow Yeerks.

In that wave of fear, I let my mental guard drop, and my thoughts seeped down into Karen's brain through the bond between us. And she was as frightened as I.

Then, an idea occurred to me. One of the memories I had extracted from Cassie's brain during the brief period in which she had been my slave.

Without a word to Karen, I hurried through the dark streets of the town. It was now very late, and there was almost no activity. No cars, no people walking, very few lights in the houses and buildings. I followed the map in Cassie's memories that were now my memories, and made my way to the abandoned house, and the little garden shed behind it.

I entered the shed, and, almost as blind in that dark as I was in my natural state, I scrabbled in the dirt with Karen's hands, searching, searching.

And then, at last, I found it. A tiny hole, dug by a small mammal.

Now, for the first time in a long time, I spoke to Karen.

"Can you find your way home, or at least to someone who will take care of you?"

"Yes," Karen replied. Then, after a pause, she added: "Will you be able to do the same, Aftran?"

"I hope so. Goodbye, Karen."

"Goodbye Aftran."

I lowered Karen's head down to the ground, and turned it so that her ear was just an inch above the tiny hole in the dirt – the tunnel entrance.

I withdrew myself from Karen. I severed the connections to her brain, resumed my natural shape, and squirmed out of her ear, down into the hole.

It was a completely unnatural world for me. I was a creature of water, in a world of earth. Squirming, wriggling, blind and terrified, down the tunnel that the Animorphs had dug in mole morph. The tunnel that hopefully still led to the Yeerk pool.

I knew there was precious little chance of me reaching there. Even if the tunnel was still completely intact after these weeks since it had been dug, I still had to navigate the bat cave at its end, before reaching the Yeerk pool cavern. Only fifty feet separated me from the one place on the planet where I would be safe, and yet it may as easily have been fifty light-years.

And even if I did reach it, what would await me? A lifetime of blindness, minimal sensation, and no more hosts, ever, in that pool. But I had promised Cassie. It was what she had sacrificed herself for.

Down, down I went through the darkness. After a while, I ceased to be afraid. I ceased to dwell on my own suffering. I ceased to dwell on my own guilt. I simply was. My own pathetic self, squirming, struggling, alone in the dark.

Until the pain began.

At first, I tried to ignore it – to tell myself I was mistaken. But there was no mistaking it. I had last left the Yeerk pool the night I had seen my brother killed – slain when the Hork-Bajir host he had been in was killed. I had followed his killer – Cassie – and the following day, she and I had become lost in the forest. We had spent the following night in a cave together, and in the day that came after, we had met her friend Marco, who had threatened to kill me; Cassie had become my host to save Karen, and then me and Cassie had made the fateful deal. It was night again when I entered the Animorphs' mole tunnel. I did not know how long I had been in the tunnel now, but I felt sure that day must have come again on the surface above, and was perhaps now coming to an end. It was almost three days now since I last tasted the rays of the Kandrona.

The pain grew, and I became less and less lucid. Images from my past swam before me – the memories of the four hosts I had had in my life – the poor, lowly Ged, the Hork-Bajir, Karen, and, finally, Cassie.

I was starving. Dying in a hole under the ground, a pathetic, lost, grovelling parasite.

And then, all of a sudden, there was no more pain.

A warmth filled me. Like the light of the Kandrona.

Had I reached my goal? Was I in the Yeerk pool?

No, I knew I was not. I wasn't swimming. What was happening to me?

_Do not be afraid, Aftran._

A voice! A rich, powerful voice unlike any I had ever heart.

"Who are you?"

_In the legends of the Andalites, I am known as the Elimist. They do not trust me._

"Oh," I said. "Well, that doesn't surprise me. The Andalites trust no-one!"

_Ha ha ha!_ The deep, rich voice laughed at what I said. _Do not think about the Andalites, Aftran. They are no concern of yours now. Instead, look at what I show you._

And before my eyes, an ocean of colour exploded.

It was a world of water, like my own world. But in this world I could see! I could see thousands of bright, wonderful creatures swimming around me. Eels and creatures of many strange shapes, of all colours, red, and green, and gold, free and happy, living from the energy beneath the sea floor. More colours than I could ever imagine.

And then I said: "I know this place. This is the planet Leera. The world our people wanted to invade with the hammerhead sharks of this world. But the Cassie's people foiled our plans. Twice."

_Yes, Aftran._

I was swimming now. Free of the trapping earth, I was swimming, swimming among the colours, among the glorious creatures. I felt joy. Joy like I had never known in all my life.

"Why do you show me this? What do you show me all this beauty?"

_I show you it, so you can see yourself._

"What?"

_The beauty you see here. All of this colour, this light, this sweetness, is what exists in your own soul, Aftran. You are a creature too precious to not see it._

"I must return, mustn't I? To the Yeerk pool"

_Yes, Aftran, you must. I am not to interfere in the destiny of your race, or of the humans, or of the Andalites. But I can help ease one soul. Because I know you will still do what you must, whether I show you this or not. But I wanted to show you your destiny. A world of light and happiness, that you will create with the beauty of your own heart. Different from what I show you here, maybe, but a thing no less beautiful. Go now, Aftran, and remember what you have seen._

The world went dark.

I was falling. Falling into the water. I was surrounded by Yeerks – my own kind, as blind, and unaware of who I was as I was of them. I was drinking in the life-giving rays that flowed from the Kandrona. And I was happy.

I was blind, but in my heart I could see. I had freed myself, by keeping my promise.

And thus, in my heart, I was happy. In my heart, I could see colours.


End file.
